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Once in the mountains, Troop 501 discovers that trekking has changed radically since Carson's day. "Low-impact camping" rules mean skipping the traditional campfire unless the fire pit is cleaned and the ashes buried. Opened food must be consumed on the spot. An informal "30-second rule" applies to spilled food: eat it fast. "Smellables" such as soap, toothpaste and tomorrow's rations, all of which can attract bears, are loaded into a burlap bag after dinner and strung over a 20-ft.-high cable. Nighttime hygiene is discouraged; a freshened-up camper in a sleeping bag is yet another smellable. Breakfast is scheduled soon after a groggy, wet dawn so hikers can cover ground before the occasionally terrifying thunderstorms hit. Lightning killed scouts at Philmont in 1987 and 1988.
Squabbling occurs during 501's damp, disorganized first nights. Ranger Brad Wolgast, 21, an eagle scout and psychology student from Kansas, observes privately that the troop's adults and boys communicate poorly. "Things get left unsaid," he explains. Staff members at base camp tell of a stressed-out troop that tied one of its hikers to a tree earlier this year. Philmont chaplain Rusty Cowden, 38, remembers his own trek in 1967: "We got lost. A bear ate our food, and it rained 11 out of 12 days." But Cowden recalls the trip joyously. Coping with blisters, bears and soggy meals somehow adds texture to the chill of windy mountaintops and the sight of wildlife roaming in ghostly aspen groves. Most of all, scouting's unstylish traditions of group discipline and self-reliance provide a powerful social cement. "Scouting comes down generations, from my father to my brother to me," says 501's Morgan Browning, 14. "It sticks with you."
Since scouting is bound to such traditions, the movement faces the challenge of joining the fast-paced '90s without losing values that should endure. Quaint slogans like "Be prepared" and "Do a good turn daily" may in fact be useful in an age of Middle East crises and crack cocaine. Inner-city scout troops now meet in welfare hotels, in juvenile halls, even on ghetto street corners, where mobile homes serve as assembly halls. "We're not using the Norman Rockwell image anymore," says chief scout executive Ben Love, 60, who has initiated campaigns to combat five "unacceptables": hunger, illicit drugs, child abuse, youth unemployment and illiteracy. During Love's tenure, scouting has also developed coeducational "Career Awareness" Explorer posts, in which young people contemplating such careers as medicine, law enforcement and computers can meet professionals in those fields.
In a 19th century mining camp, Troop 501 is eating dehydrated lasagna softened by boiling water and the evening's drizzle. It is oddly tasty. Bearded "miners" like Jedediah Ezekial Springfield (eagle scout Trey Berlin, 21, of Richmond, Ky.) offer to teach gold panning and to provide tours of the abandoned mine shaft; they speak in twangy "interpretive accents." After dinner, the miners put on a "stomp" with guitar music and surprisingly pungent jokes. Another day's hike leads to a cattle ranch set in a lush green valley. At that campfire, a talented cowboy-guitarist nicknamed Fluffy performs the Oreo Cookie Blues, which he describes as a "song of addiction." Next morning the scouts heat irons to mark their hiking boots and hats with Philmont's brand: a P and "crazy" (backward) S under a bar.